


Fantasy

by again



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Child Abuse, Multi, and ambitious, brian is very bored, everyone's a bitch, pre-michael time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 11:21:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17324084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/again/pseuds/again
Summary: There's nothing like bad parenthood to put you to sleep.





	Fantasy

**Author's Note:**

> A little piece of Brian goes a long way.

Brian chewed on the well-done steak, his eyes almost drooping from boredom. Both his parents took their sweet time cutting their peas and carrots in half, very intently so, that they never even lifted their heavy heads and look at their children. Or each other. This happens too much, Brian thought. How dull can a routine be, that he would want to tear his hair out right then and there?  
  
"Um, m-mother,” his sister Claire wiped her mouth with the edge of her napkin (Brian rolled his discreetly), “do you want to know my progress on the science project so far?”  
  
Brian poked his mound of mashed potatoes, creating two holes and a curve upward at the bottom. Claire shouldn’t have bothered asking, his mother’s reply wouldn’t concern her whatsoever anyway. Probably the teacher, the staff; hell, probably even the frog she was slicing for the fucking project. He sighed internally, wishing an end to this endless loop of Saturday family dinners.  
  
“Oh, yes, how  _is_  Mr. Goon? I heard he had small pox last month.”  
  
Claire didn’t even blink, “Yes . . . he is cured now, much safer for students.”  
  
His mother grabbed the huge wine glass, and drank half the content, “That’s marvelous news, honey.”   
  
She looked over, her face filled with tenderness, and patted her daughter’s pigtails. His sister smiled like she owned a Rolls Royce and a million dollars in cash.  
  
He swallowed his meal quickly—unfortunately not choking—and gulped his juice. The air was too thick, too cold to fully understand anything.   
  
The light above the dining table flickered, once, twice, then dim, then it buzzed, then it stopped. He focused on that instead. At least it was unpredictable.   
  
Brian's father cleared his throat. “And how are you, sonny boy?” his hunched figure spoke, “uh, did you have uh, you know . . .”  
  
Brian played with the little gravy on his plate, "My day was fine, dad. School's great. Friends are nice. I'm excited for the holidays."   
  
"That's good. That's—I'm glad," his father said, stabbing some more turkey for himself.   
  
His mother sat straighter, watching the last of the meat being eaten. She curled her lips, and drank some more of her wine, her gaze on her lap the entire time. Claire frowned, confused that her mother's attention was averted, and Brian silently pointed to his father's plate. She oh'd.   
  
Fantastic. He could just see the mac and cheese containers splattered all around the kitchen by tomorrow. Fucking Jack, ruining everything. It shouldn't have upset her, though. His father hadn't changed after all these years, why should he now?  
  
Brian threw his napkin on the table before he did something controversial, "I'm really tired. Can I go to bed?"   
  
"No!" his sister glared, mouthing words he couldn't decipher, "I mean, um, wouldn’t you like to wait? For dessert?"   
  
"We didn't prepare any dessert, dear."   
  
"Well, yeah, but . . ."  
  
Claire's face pleaded for him to stay:  _please, please, please, don't let me stay alone with them_. She'd always had a hopeful, sentimentalist soul. Or a demented brain. He wondered what it was, that made her think he would ever want to spend a second more for this family. For her.   
  
His father chuckled. "Son, sit down."  
  
Brian scoffed, "No."   
  
"Did you say something?" Jack raised his eyebrows, words a bit slurred. The scar on the side his forehead folded whenever he did that. It'd always disgusted Brian; he thought it looked like a worm giving birth or taking a dump.  
  
Brian inhaled, "Yeah. I said no. I wanna go to bed."   
  
Jack grinned, the nicotine in between his teeth staining his breath, "And what makes you think you can?"   
  
"Well, this is a free country. Isn't it?" he muttered. Brian didn't know whether to give himself a slap or a high-five for coming up with a comeback that soon. The rug felt soft and furry under his foot as he moved it back and forth, wishing for it to swallow him whole and never puked him out back to the top again.  
  
His father's finger wiggled, gesturing him to come closer. Brian obeyed, walking to the head of the table beside him, and crouched. His heart beating erratically, swearing to whoever was listening for his sole existence.  
  
Jack whispered gingerly, "Don't be a fucking pussy, AND SAY IT LOUDER."   
  
Brian took a step back, holding his ear. The stench of scotch and the absence of toothpaste surrounded him. He could swear he saw stars, and heard a giant bell ringing at the top of his head.  
  
A smack to his left cheek awakened him, "You wanna be just like your mother? No fucking guts at all, and runs to Jesus every goddamn minute ‘cuz she's too much of a chicken to do anything by herself?"   
  
“You're drunk again,” he murmured, running backwards.

Brian didn't see his mother's reaction and just took two steps up the stairs, the voice of his father cursing underneath. "What a waste of money."   
  
And "oh just go to your room and don't bother to get out." echoed, once Brian was behind the door.

Yeah I know, Brian said to himself, you said that last week.

He sighed and launched himself to the bed, placed against the wall, his itchy maroon blanket behind him. He was still hearing them arguing downstairs, thanks to the too-thin walls: his mother telling his father to calm down, that Brian was just twelve, didn’t know better, bla bla bla, cry, bla bla bla. Claire weeping like she wasn't seeing this every damn dinner they'd ever had. His father swearing the ungrateful little child to hell. Then something broke. And so on. 

Brian ducked his head, down under his wooden mattress. Piles of books, papers, torn out covers, and records, were hidden carefully behind the shadows. He was relieved to find them all there. After last time when he’d been reckless enough to put all those in his drawers, Claire had found them during one of her raids and grabbed one for herself.

Then she’d had the audacity to skitter and tell their parents. Not very preposterously, foolish brat couldn’t have used her head. No one had cared, even if she said he had stolen Stevie Wonder’s Drown in My Own Tears.

He took out Grendel and lifted it up to the small beams of streetlights, streaming from the windows beside his closet. Brian brushed off the cover. Some of the nasty termites Brian was convinced had been brought upon by his mother’s overpriced, over-sized, overly-fragrant wet plants by the foyer, caused soft wood dust to crowd some of the yellow pages.

Most of the words written in the book couldn’t stick themselves to Brian’s head, like they just didn’t want to be understood. Even when his overweight uncle had said once that Brian grew up too fast, matured too quickly. Sometimes, he wondered why he would go so far to grasp it, to get its significance, since this would be his fifth attempt at reading it. “Fuck this.”

He put it on his nightstand, and dug again, deeper this time, then he smiled when his fingers touched the smooth, thin, delicate cover of the comic Adventures of Captain Astro, issue three. Brian flipped it open to the folded corner of the page part, a small number 13 at the top of the page. He traced Captain Astro’s blue cape with his index, imagining himself flying and saving helpless civilians from, at the end, inevitable demise.

The rummage had stopped, his house no longer felt like a zoo—at least for another two days or so. But, as he leaned on his headboard, watching the illustration of his hero pushing buttons and swiping holograms, and being frantic because the ship he and all the crews lived in was about to explode with poisonous intergalactic nuclear gas, he could not be more careless. The bubble felt safe, breathable, in a sense which meant the walls around him weren’t caving in on him every second.

And as he slept, convinced he wasn’t snoring like an elephant, he dreamed of the scene where Captain Astro and all the inhabitants of Space Ship 1094 were all joyfully celebrating, drinking purple oozes from a bottle and eating space beef they’d discovered in planet 67, last issue. All because that one short shy guy, who'd been sweeping by the corner, had taken them all by a storm, instructed the cadets to “push the yellow button then pull the lever which will emerge, down,” holding up a thick brown book he’d always carried around. That guy got a _big_ raise, and ascended as one of the trusted men in the system.

Okay, so, he would read as many John Gardners, as many Dickens, as many Einsteins-whoever as his eyes were willing to obey. He’d take the world by a storm, make an unexpected wave of fuck you to Joan and Jack and everyone who strangled him now, and arise as one of the best and brightest and beautiful. No big deal.

Later, he would handle all the dark stuff, probably tomorrow. Right now, he had a fantasy to live in.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Feedbacks are appreciated:)


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